Oskar Omdal
Oskar Omdal (born October 11, 1895 in Kristiansand , Norway , † December 23, 1927 in the Atlantic off Nova Scotia or Newfoundland , Canada ) was a Norwegian pioneer in aviation . In 1925 he was a mechanic on board one of the two flying boats with which the polar explorers Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth tried in vain to reach the North Pole by air. In 1926 he flew over the North Pole with Amundsen, Ellsworth and Umberto Nobile in the airship Norge . He died in 1927, piloting Frances Wilson Grayson while she was trying to become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic.
Life
Oskar Omdal was born in 1895 as the son of master shoemaker John O. Omdal (* 1866) and his wife Marta (* 1866) and grew up in Kristiansand. After a year at the technical college in Porsgrunn , he switched to the newly founded flight engineering school of the Norwegian Navy in the summer of 1916 . In 1919 he graduated from the Naval Aviation School in Horten . After several refresher courses, he was promoted to lieutenant in 1922.
As a mechanic, he was also in demand in Norwegian civil aviation. He worked briefly for Christian Hellesen's (1891–1982) Norsk Aeroplanfabrik and in the spring of 1919 was the first employee of the A / S Aero airline founded by Tancred Ibsen (1893–1978) . On August 16, 1920, on loan to Norsk Luftfartsrederi , he carried out the first Norwegian scheduled passenger flight from Stavanger via Haugesund to Bergen in a seaplane .
In 1921, Omdal was recruited next to Odd Dahl by Amundsen to carry out reconnaissance flights as part of his Maud expedition. As early as 1922, Amundsen changed his plans and aimed for a flight over the North Pole to Spitzbergen . He bought a Junkers F 13 , the world's first all-metal aircraft, and Omdal was to transfer it from New York to Seattle , where the expedition ship Maud was moored, within four days . The plane's engine got stuck on the first day. Omdal had to make an emergency landing at Clarion in Pennsylvania , where it was badly damaged. A replacement aircraft was brought to Seattle by rail and transported on the Maud to Wainwright , Alaska , where Amundsen and Omdal disembarked. In 1922, a test flight was no longer possible due to strong winds. The men built a hangar and a hut, called Maudheim , where Omdal wintered alone. On May 11, 1923, he made his first test flight, but had problems with the engine and on landing the attachment of the left ski broke. When the same thing happened on June 10, Amundsen canceled the pole flight.
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In 1925, Amundsen had bought two Dornier Wal flying boats with the help of his US sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth and put together a six-person expedition team, which in addition to himself and his deputy Ellsworth also belonged to Oskar Omdal. The team was completed by the Norwegian military pilots Leif Dietrichson and Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen as well as the German mechanic of the Dornier works Karl Feucht . The aim of the expedition was to fly from Spitzbergen to the North Pole and back and possibly discover new land. Omdal fell to the role of mechanic in the N 24 , which was piloted by Dietrichson and navigated by Ellsworth. The second aircraft, the N 25 , flew Riiser-Larsen. When the rear engine of the N 25 failed, the two planes landed at 87 ° 43 'north latitude and 10 ° 20' 1 "west longitude, the northernmost point reached by an aircraft up to that point. On the way to the N 25 , Omdal and Dietrichson collapsed in the ice and were rescued by Ellsworth. It turned out to be impossible to get both planes afloat again. The six men needed more than three weeks to build a runway for the N 25 on their own . Everything that could be dispensed with was left on the ice when everyone on the N 25 began their return flight to Spitsbergen. A year later, Omdal was one of three machinists on board the airship Norge , which flew from Spitsbergen to Alaska under the direction of Amundsens, Nobiles and Ellsworth ', crossing the North Pole.
Oskar Omdal brought back rich footage from the flying boat expedition. With the recordings made by Paul Berge on Svalbard , it became the full-length documentary Roald Amundsen - Lincoln Ellsworth's flyveekspedisjon 1925 , which premiered on September 7, 1925. Parts of the film have been preserved.
In 1927, Omdal was hired by Bernt Balchen as a reserve pilot for Richard Byrd's Antarctic expedition . While waiting for the expedition to start, he took on a few other jobs. Among other things, he worked for the American pilot Frances Wilson Grayson , who wanted to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. On the first leg of the flight from New York to Harbor Grace on Newfoundland , the Sikorsky S-36 flown by Omdal disappeared on December 23, 1927 with Frances Wilson Grayson, the navigator Brice Goldsborough (1889-1927) and the flight engineer Frank Koehler.
Honors
In honor of Oskar Omdal, a lake in the Canadian province of Ontario was given the name Omdahl Lake on May 7, 1928 . A bay on the island of Nordostland in the Svalbard Archipelago is called Omdalkilen.
Web links
- Ulf Larsstuvold: Oskar Omdal . In: Norsk biografisk leksikon (Norwegian)
- Leif Oskar Omdal . In: Store norske leksikon (Norwegian)
- Oscar Omdal (1895–1927) on the homepage of the Frammuseum (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Roald Amundsen - Lincoln Ellsworth's flyveekspedisjon 1925 in Norsk filmografi, accessed on April 11, 2016.
- ↑ Amundsen Polar Flight - 1925 / Silent Movie on YouTube
- ^ Garth James Cameron: From Pole to Pole: Roald Amundsen's Journey in Flight . Pen & Sword, 2013. ISBN 978-1-78159-337-0 .
- ↑ Omdahl Lake on Natural Resources Canada, accessed April 10, 2016.
- ↑ Omdalkilen . In: The Place Names of Svalbard (first edition 1942). Norsk Polarinstitutt , Oslo 2001, ISBN 82-90307-82-9 (English, Norwegian).
Remarks
- ↑ Amundsen himself mentions the city of Marion as the crash site in his book The Hunt for the North Pole on page 12 . However, the reports in the local newspapers of Clarion show that the crash happened here. See: Crash of the Elizabeth ( Memento of the original from April 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website www.buehlfield.info, accessed April 10, 2016.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Omdal, Oscar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Norwegian aviation pioneer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 11, 1895 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kristiansand , Norway |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 23, 1927 |
| Place of death | Atlantic Ocean off Nova Scotia or Newfoundland , Canada |